Thought the turnout for Wembley looked shocking especially the saints end .

What do they need to do to get the fans in.

Oh I forgot the fans know they are going to bottle it ?

Lots of reasons - time of year; august bank holiday many families on holiday. Grand final has overtaken CC final as the premier final. Magic weekend has also been added to the calender as a jamboree that all fans get on board, something that used to be reserved for the CC final. Poor marketing and scheduling by the RFL for the rounds.

They are just a few of the reasons i can think off the top of my head. My personal opinion is that the new wembley just does not have the same feel as the old which was an absolute unbelievable stadium and atmosphere. That has not been recreated with the new and is basically Wembley in name only. I thought the millennium stadium was as close as you get to the old wembley in modern times. 70 odd thousand is about where we are at and it would be full house most years.
I get this may not be a popular view and many would prefer to stick it out with Wembley but i find it hard to see us improving too much on the 60 - 70 k crowds we have been getting for a few years now; simply put the Grand Final is the pinnacle now and the days of 80k plus finals are long gone.

What was the actual attendence, upper tiar almost completely empty and other areas 70-80% full at best. Looked less than 60k

60000 or thereabouts was the attendance. Considering saints hadn't been there in a decade it was a poor crowd

It’s the Mickey Mouse cup, nobodies interested in it.

It is the result of the elitism of SL before SL most teams had a chance of winning the cup now it's down to 6 . It's the same in football after the advent of the FA premiership

Don't really agree with that, in the last 10 years, 9 different teams have made Wembley which out of a top flight of 12 isnt bad going. Only Salford, Wakefield and London havent been and they've never been regulars in finals anyway.

Also the underdog has won 4 years in a row, and this years winning margin of just 14 was the biggest for 4 years. I dont think the quality of the final is the issue, its the timings and the marketing.

Yep.
We have to get away from this thinking that the product on the pitch is the only thing that matters.
It needs to be an event, not just another but just more important game.

If you go back to Saints in 2008, there's been six different winners of the Cup in twelve years, with a further three different teams making the final. Compare that to the Grand Final over the same period where there's only been three different winners (one of whom only won it once, so there's two massively dominant teams) with only two others making the final. The Grand Final is absolutely the big one - I'll never try and deny that no matter how many of them we lose - but the Challenge Cup is still far less predictable, and that does (or at least should) add some value.

Last year the Catalans vs Warrington attracted 50,000. So they didn't do too badly last year, considering hat the Cup Final is now shown to be a declining attraction.

Going to Wembley is a bit like a visit to the dentist!
You dont really want to go but you know you have to because your team is in the final.

It is not a pleasant day out.
Depending on where you are from it is an 8 to 10 hour round trip including a stop at a motorway services where you queue for the toilets and get ripped off if you want to buy food of drink.
When you arrive the area surrounding the stadium is scruffy and dirty certainly not a place you would choose to visit.
The stadium itself is fine after you have you have been through security, had your bag searched and empty you pockets then go through a scanner.
There are plenty of outlets in side serving a variety of drinks an food but again expect to get ripped off.
Of course you could make a weekend of it and couple the delights of Wembley with a trip to our nation's capital but you would need to have more money than sense.

The cup is a valued trophy to the fans of the clubs involved but the days of a lot of neutral fans making the journey for an enjoyable day or weekend are long gone.

Basically the "magic" of Wembley has gone, it's now just a big stadium in a scruffy area of a rip-off city

I understand the sentiments behind your post and most of is absolutely right.
However, other sports seem more than capable of filling Wembley and while some round ball fans may not have to travel quite as far, although plenty go longer distances, we are supposed to be celebrating the sport and have a final between the two best cup sides of that season and as a sport, once a year, we should be able to fill the country's major sporting arena.

It never used to be a problem and people generally are better off now than they were 20/30 years ago.

There is little doubt that everything in our sport in now focused towards the GF, which has taken much of the sparkle away from the cup.
But, Wembley is still where it used to be, the area around Wembley is actually improved over recent years and the rip off prices are similar at EVERY major venue in the country.
One thing for sure is that nobody can blame Catalan for the poor attendance and to say that the contest was between the two clubs sitting first and second in the comp, who both like to boast about their support, not to mention the cracking weather etc, there are very few genuine excuses for the attendance.

I agree with the timings and the marketing, the time span between the semi final and the final loses momentum interest. Once you encroach into the football season you lose more interest for fans who support both sports. They have a chance to improve things next year but the things you can't improve is the public transport and the expense of going down there.

I used to live near there in 1970/1971, I can assure you the area has declined a lot since then.
I agree these days some people have more income but people are also better travelled and expect more for there money.
In the 1950s and 1960s a trip to London/Wembley was the most probably the furthest some people had ever travelled.

Realistically we are never going to match the attendances of the FA Cup and League Cup, the NFL games that are played there attract a big crowd but they are a unique event.

Perhaps at my age I'm used to better things but it's not somewhere I'm ever likely to go as neutral fan.

I do agree that "the big day out" at Wembley has now disappeared as a concept and certainly for the cost involved, a trip to either Toulouse or Perpignan is way more attractive and generally cheaper (but maybe not the beer) and with the GF being the major event to bring the curtain down on the season, much of the "celebration" aspect has gone from Wembley too.
Not being a fan of football of American football, I dont know if those events do more to "make a day of it" or whether the fans attending for football are happy to have their big day out.
When you consider that the play off games for the lower leagues gain huge crowds, as do the FA Cup semi finals etc, Wembley does still seem a huge draw for the round ball game and yes, generally, football is massively better supported than RL, I still feel that moving the final North, to allow easier access and a cheaper day out, is underselling the game and any "draw" that Wembley has, would be lost forever.
Moving to somewhere like the Millennium stadium could be an option.
Still a great venue, a little smaller and we may just interest a few Welsh fans into the game ?
However, this would be waving the white flag over an event that used to be something quite special.

What about taking the now devalued CCup on the road? Say Wembley every other year and then a regional one. This could even include France, for me its one of only three drawcard games RL has that could be successfully marketed anywhere and thus generate decent crowds and good media attention, ie its not a meaningless game. The others are the GF and any GB V Australia game.

I agree it is a landmark fixture especially as it is the only major RL final on BBC.
I am a traditionalist and don't particularly want to see it moved, my comments were aimed more at explaining why it is poorly attended and maybe that is the level of attendance we should expect.

Having said all that there are ways the attendance can be improved.
Firstly if the RL accept that it is our major showpiece then maybe they should use some of the sponsorship money to encourage fans to attend.

We have approx 30 clubs in the league and numerous amateur clubs. The work should start now to try and encourage all those clubs to take one or more coach loads of fans to next years final.
All clubs have local businesses who sponsor matches, encourage the clubs to use their contacts to get these firms to sponsor a coach trip to the final, maybe for their own employees and or other fans.
In terms of advertising costs it isn't expensive and maybe could be built in either the price of match sponsorship or ground advertisements..
Each club could start a club (similar to say a Xmas club ) where fans could pay in an amount per month or per week towards the cost of a Wembley ticket again this could be wrapped up with maybe payments tothe clubs lottery fund.

I'm sure there are numerous other ways it could be done but the RFL need to find a way of making it worthwhile for the grassroots clubs to put the effort into it.

Back when Wembley was a sell-out every year, the world has moved on. It was often the big trip of the year for many people, but now people enjoy city breaks and overseas trips all the time. Going to London is nothing special anymore, and the loss of the old Empire Stadium takes away the traditional feel.

It was also the only big event, and the RFL can't have that many. They either have Magic or they have the Challenge Cup, and they have it at a time when perhaps 10% of the audience isn't on holiday, but they can't have both. They could easily make it a whole weekend thing somehow. Take it on the road. There are many ways to reinvigorate it, but watching a half-empty stadium isn't one of them.

This.

For supporters of teams who are unlikely to get to finals their day out at Magic is their Rugby League 'big stadium event'. In years gone buy many of them would have attended the CC Final as a neutral. Another thing which is overlooked, the demographic of a Rugby League crowd has changed (mostly intentionally). It's been marketed as 'the family game'. There used to be more men who go with their mates for a good session on the beer. Nowadays there's more families, kids etc which makes a more expensive day out for the whole family.

Stadiums are mostly designed these days with viewing and comfort in mind which has a significant effect on the atmosphere. The sense of occasion can be lost.

Also a lot of fans from traditional but smaller none SL clubs and amateur teams used to go as a regular event, regardless of who was playing. However, over the years the RFL/SL and the snobbish nature of many posters on forums like this has managed to alienate them.

There is no incentive or people at these clubs to organise trips because to them SL is a different world to which they no longer feel an allegiance too, a bit like the International game.

Get these people incentivised again and you will fill far more seats, maybe not the sell outs we used to get but certainly a lot closer. I'd guess we are talking maybe 5,000 extra fans.

Well said.

Wait, hang on...RLFans.com is responsible for lower Wembley crowds...

Challenge Cup is a dying/dead tournament, poor attendances in every round. Throw in there's too many games it's just time to get rid of it.

Could you imaging football doing the same with the FA Cup ??

Clearly the Challenge Cup is not quite right at the moment and THE main reason is the move to summer rugby and the emphasis for success all driven towards the GF.
To abolish the cup, along with almost 130 years of history would be a very, very sad day for the sport.
As with many things that are wrong with our sport, the promotion of the cup is terrible.
Even the addition of the 1895 final to Cup Final Day was done the wrong way round.
Having the lower ranked game on after the main event was mickey poor.
IF we ware going to have any double header events, the lower grade game has to be played first. It's like going to a gig and putting the support band up second

I agree

The final needs moving back 6-8 weeks away from summer holidays.

Scrap this seeding system aswell and go back to random draw. Losing the shock factor of two big teams going head to head in first round proper just takes the excitement of the draw away, now every super league team knows they are more than likely having to play pretty much 3 super league teams to get to the final. Each round should be every 3 weeks and 4 weeks from semi to final.

Scrap magic weekend as that's has served very little purpose, attendance their as stalled and was never really that great anyway. Make the CC weekend the big day out weekend again. Having it 2-3 months away from the grand final means they two events will not interfere with each other so much.

I don't see why creating that bit of random draw surprise rounds played at regular intervals and only the grand final as the ther. It occasion will not help get some cup magic back again. It's never going to be the biggest event ever again the Grand final has that and so it should be, be no reason why it cannot be a close second.